Sniping for an audience in the Capitol

Updated 11:20 pm, Thursday, May 16, 2013

HARTFORD -- Simmering tensions between Republicans and majority Democrats on pending budget negotiations boiled over on Thursday during a panel discussion with small-town leaders.

Shut out in the final stage of talks between majority leaders and Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, the GOP lawmakers tried to make their points with the audience, about 60 members of the Council of Small Towns gathered in a Capitol meeting room.

They warned that while towns and cities have had to cut services to keep local spending under control, the Legislature is planning a two-year, 9.6 percent budget hike.

"It's typical of the arrogance that goes on around here," Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said.

Democrats want to use gimmicks to dodge the constitutional cap on spending for the two-year $43.8 billion spending package that would take effect July 1, House Majority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr. said. The budget proposal exceeds the mandated cap by almost $4 billion.

Democratic House and Senate leaders, on the other hand, said Republicans haven't been allowed into the late-session budget talks because they won't offer any real options.

Indeed, even the math the GOP uses is misleading, Speaker of the House J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden said: The 9.6 percent budget hike figure the Republicans like to quote is really just a combination of the 4 percent-plus amounts in each year.

"We shouldn't have folks coming into the room who have no intention, at the end of the day, of supporting the budget and in good faith ought to put something on the table, as the governor did back in February and as the Appropriations and Finance committees did, passing with Democratic majorities," said President Pro Tempore Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn. "But to be part of that conversation, we ought to see something on the table."

Lawmakers hope to have a final spending package by the June 5 adjournment date, but often pass the deadline, going into special session to finish legislation.